ProjectJack

Could someone who has visited before please advise if there are any car rental offices at or near the Gruz cruise terminal? I am finding conflicting information online.

 

I'm guessing we will have to take the shuttle to old town and walk to one of the offices around there?

I thought I would update this post for anyone interested in car rentals since it was very difficult to find information online.

We decided to rent a car on the first day of our overnight in Dubrovnik (Gruz). While some of the larger companies like Hertz have offices outside the walls in Old Town, that is not a great starting point for a day-trip given the travel time back and forth from Gruz. There are a couple of small car rental offices only a few blocks across the street from the cruise terminal exit. We used one of these (Fleet) and booked online in advance through a separate travel company.

Our day trip was fantastic but experience with the rental company was mediocre. A few things to be aware of:

--Leave lots of extra time. Posted business hours are more like guidelines and these offices open whenever someone decides to show up. In our case this was 45 minutes after we were supposed to pick up our rental.

--We drove into Bosnia-Herzegivina to see Kravica Falls and Mostar. I highly recommend this itinerary but there are 2 border crossings on this route for which you need separate approvals. The Neum corridor is easy - anyone with Dubrovnik regional plates was just waved through without a passport check (although you should confirm this with your rental company - our contract had a separate line noting that we were approved to drive through the corridor). The "real" border crossing is at Metkovic and here you will be stopped for a passport check. You need to present them with a green card authorizing you to drive in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Confirm with your rental company that they will provide the green card -- they are used to tourists just asking about the Neum corridor so make sure they know you are actually going into Herzegovina. The visa costs about 70 EUR.

--Traffic at each of the border crossings above, particularly at Metkovic, can be brutal. We waited almost two hours to enter. However, the line back into Croatia only took about 20 minutes. Again just plan extra time.

Hope this is helpful for anyone looking to drive out on their own. It really is a beautiful drive and well worth doing.

Could someone who has visited before please advise if there are any car rental offices at or near the Gruz cruise terminal? I am finding conflicting information online.

I'm guessing we will have to take the shuttle to old town and walk to one of the offices around there?

Hi all,

We have an overnight in Bilbao on our upcoming cruise and thought it would be a good opportunity to rent a car and explore the surrounding Basque country on our own.

I understand the cruiseport is actually in Getxo with shuttle service to downtown. From what I can find online, all of the rental companies are clustered around downtown and/or the airport. Are there rental companies that will allow you to pickup/dropoff at the cruiseport (would save us a lot of time)? Anyone else have experience with this?

Thanks!

Thank you titangas & ProjectJack. This will be our first time to this region. How far away is the winery from the ship port? Were you gone most of the day?

 

Thanks again,

Carol

Hi Carol,

Yes we were gone most of the day. The wineries are perhaps 20-40 minutes away from the port. The tour we chose also stopped in Cassis for lunch/time on our own, which is about 45 minutes from the port.

As others have noted, you're not missing much if you leave Toulon for the day. Cassis is a beautiful resort town and a much better place to spend your time in port (IMHO).

We bought a Princess Gift Card to give to friends taking a Princess cruise. Bought it on the Princess website. We could have it (plastic card)delivered to them or us, or we could have the gift card sent electronically to them.

 

I found this on the Princess website (for onboard credit gifts):

http://www.princess.com/learn/onboard/gifts_services/onboard_credit/Index.jsp

I just want to correct this as someone recently gave us a princess gift card for our upcoming cruise and we ran into problems using it. You CANNOT use a princess gift card to add or gift onboard credit, pre-pay gratuities or shorex expenses, or do pretty much anything else except pay for a portion of your actual cruise fare.

Princess customer service insists that gift cards can only be applied to your account while onboard (you have to physically bring it with you and go to passenger services on the ship). This seems silly since you can of course charge all of these things in advance to a credit card, so they have the capability. I hope they change this policy in the future.

We (2 couples) use the gym everyday while on a cruise and since there are four, we all tend to use different equipment/do different types of workouts at various times during the day.

 

Pros for the Royal - We all found that there was a wide variety of equipment and that it was new and in great shape. They also have a fridge with cold wet cloths to cool you down.

 

Cons for the Royal gym - the downsides are twofold - the first is that the space is very cramped with very little room to do anything other than use the machines - this is due to the aerobics/pay activities room being separated from the gym area and most times it was used by the trainers. The second part is that the gym is the easiest way for people to get to the back of the ship and thus, there is constant traffic through the already cramped area.

 

Did the cons affect our use of the facility? Yes in some ways - we usually did our stretching and sit ups in our room, but it was the foot traffic of non gym users that was the most annoying. All that said the gym is very usable and had all the equipment most anyone would require.

 

One other point is that the Royal does have a great outdoor running/walking track which we used.

This is spot on. We are gym rats and one of the reasons we will probably not sail Royal/Regal again is that the gym is so cramped. There is only one rowing machine (erg) and if you use proper form you will literally bump into people walking behind or to the side of you. I told a trainer about this on Regal so not sure if they have since spaced it out better.

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We did the xrails and had a blast. Some nice mud pits and a few small jumps. One of the people in our group busted a tire! :)

Great pic! Thanks for the responses.

A group of 4 of us (two young couples, late 20s) will be in Cozumel on the Emerald in February and are considering doing one of these. We are not really interested in the all inclusive beaches - we feel like we do plenty of laying in the sun and drinking on the boat :)

This will be the first time in Cozumel for all of us so we have never even seen anyone on a dune buggy or x-rail tour. My question is: are these really as "off-road" and adventurous as they are advertised? Or are you basically driving behind a guide on a paved road? We've seen mixed reviews suggesting these tours have been "watered down" a bit after someone got hurt and not sure what to expect.

Thanks!

We are a couple in our late 20s (no kids) and thinking of staying in Kemah for a day before our cruise on the Emerald in Feb. We are flying in, so we like the idea of staying close to Bayport cruise terminal, but from what we can find online the rides and attractions on Kemah Boardwalk seem to be geared toward families.

Would love to hear from someone in our age range who has stayed in Kemah -- thanks!

It's sort of a pain to get to, but Belle Isle in East Boston has the best lobster roll in town IMO.

I highly recommend Provence Wine Tours: http://www.provencewinetours.com

We had a terrific experience with them on our stop in Toulon. They pick you up right at the port and drive you to local wineries in a group of 8-10 people. It is the perfect size for tastings. They also dropped us off in Cassis for lunch and drove us up to the cliffs above the town for a nice photo op.

Shouldn't be a problem. They will probably give you your own table for two. I recall seeing this a few times.

Just make sure to check the icons on the deck plan when you get assigned your cabin. The handful of times we have booked guarantee cabins, we were "upgraded" into adjoining staterooms or 3/4 person staterooms with bunks hanging from the walls (happened on several lines, not just princess).

Reading these boards is the first time I have heard that room service is not included in the auto tip. I presumed it was.

It is. I actually had this conversation with a steward on our last Princess cruise. The attendants that make the room service deliveries are included in the auto-tip pool.

Assuming you maintain your auto-tips, you should not feel obligated to tip as you would room service at a land hotel. That said many passengers (us included) tip extra for room service. Force of habit perhaps.

Crooner's is excellent. I drink a steady supply of vodka martinis and having recently returned from a HAL cruise I can say that Crooner's offers a much better martini. The glasses are nicer, the servers perform dances as they shake the drink, and they have a full compliment of stuffed and non-stuffed queen olives (rather than smaller manzanilla olives on HAL).

Bottom line…After hearing this, I feel it is shameful to remove auto-tips from your shipboard account. All these people work hard to support themselves and perhaps a family back home. If you are not happy with the service you receive, removing auto-tips does NOT punish the person providing the poor service…it hurts them all. Giving poor grades to the person or staff that let you down in your post-cruise survey is more harmful than anything you can do, since it can take points away from the person. Remember…points determine their share of the tip pool. Cruise fares are so cheap now, the non-salaried staff depends on tips to earn a living. Auto-tips should be considered as a mandatory cost to your cruise…I wish Princess would make it impossible to remove them from your account.

Wow thanks for posting this and I could not agree more. I was unaware that anyone actually did this.

My fiancee and I are in our late 20s/early 30s and both worked in the service industry through college. We have recent memories of how awful this type of work can be and how downright abusive some customers are. These people deserve every cent of the minimum "auto-tip" even if they have a bad day. We tip well above the minimum on each cruise and I thought (and I hope) that is common.

Princess already offers places for dining to those that do not wish to dress up for dinner in the dining room on formal night. One dining room would not be enough to hold the numbers of passengers that participate in formal night.:D

Not currently, of course, but if smart casual were permitted in a/the MDR on those nights I suspect many passengers would leave their formal wear at home.

We are young professionals and cruise Princess often --

I agree that the current rules should be enforced (and we DO adhere to the dress code), but I sympathize with the "I'm on vacation" mindset to an extent. Maybe Princess recognizes that the demographics are changing a bit on these ships and for those of us that wear a suit to work everyday, the last thing we want to do is dress up for "formal night" when we just left our snowy Northeast office buildings for a one-week Caribbean/Mexican/HI cruise (yes, we know the buffet is an option).

I wouldn't mind seeing "formal night" relaxed or limited in some way (maybe only required at one dining area/specialty restaurant that evening). IMO, slacks and a polo should be acceptable every night, as they are in most upscale land restaurants. This would also greatly simplify packing logistics.

Please spare us the "go on Carnival" comments -- we prefer Princess and are trying to offer a different perspective.